An ill caver at a depth of more than 1,000 meters, is in such a condition that only a coordinated rescue operation can bring him to the surface.Continue reading
Hungarian experts have already brought up American cave explorer Mark Dickey to a depth of 300 meters in the Morca cave in southern Turkey, the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service announced Monday morning. At the beginning of September, the caver suffered gastric bleeding and was trapped at a depth of 1,040 meters.
As Hungary Today reported earlier, Dickey’s rescue is part of an international rescue operation involving Hungarian, Croatian, Italian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, and Polish teams, as well as Turkish organizations. The rescue began Saturday afternoon.
Mark Dickey fell ill on September 2 during an international expedition in which he was accompanied by three Americans, four Turks, one Hungarian, and four Hungarians from Romania (Cluj-Napoca, Kolozsvár).
The first team to reach Dickey early last week was a four-man medical team from the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service. The team stabilized the researcher’s condition with medication and blood transfusions.
The intervention, which is not easy even under hospital conditions, was carried out by a volunteer from the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service. “A specialist who is a caver and who is still fit to intervene after descending to a depth of 1,000 meters was able to go down. He was accompanied by a medical support team who brought their equipment down with them, and there he was able to create the conditions he could work with,” said the head of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service.
The distressed American caver thanked the help of rescuers in a video message from a depth of about 1,000 meters last week. “I am up, I am awake, I am talking. But I am not healed from the inside yet, so I am going to need a lot of help to get out of here,” Dickey said, knowing how difficult it will be to get to the surface. Experts say it takes a healthy person 16 hours to get from a depth of 1,000 meters to the surface. According to the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service, their team is going to bring the ill caver up to 120 meters with the help of Croatian rescuers.
Featured photo via Facebook/Magyar Barlangi Mentőszolgálat